Pumpkin Party

Here in China, they take some things very seriously. Some of those things include families, respect, dumplings, and… Halloween. Most of China doesn't celebrate Halloween, but when they do, they go all out. Last weekend we had a big pumpkin carving party with the kids and it was a lot of fun. It was exciting to get all dressed up with the other teachers. And it was fun to see the cute little kids all excited running around and doing face pain on their cute tiny hands. Not very many kids showed up, but it was still a ton of fun and actually helped cut down on the craziness. Now onto our haunted house which is in a week… that's scary!

Best View of the House

The Shanghai skyline! The Bund is the largest TV tower in China and it looks pretty weird but also pretty cool. Because we went there on the busiest day of the year (literally) it was a bit of a task getting to where we could actually see the skyline rather than the back of people's heads. The pushing, shoving, and putting my bag under my shirt to keep from getting robbed was worth it in the end. It is a gorgeous skyline!

What I am thinking...Elephant Style

Ok, I gotta take a selfie of me on this elephant. You can't really see the elephant in the picture but that's ok

Wahoooooo no hands! This isn't scary and this will be a cute picture.

Yusssss I'm wearing my elephant pants that's so perfect!

Cool. I get to feed this elephant! He'll love me forever.

Oh my gosh, I did it! He took the carrot!

Oh. My. Gosh. I'll buy more carrots and feed it with my mouth!!

I'm kissing an elephant. This is the most exciting thing I've ever done. I love China.

Mid Autumn Moon Festival

Our pre-dance selfie. The school had us preform the hokey pokey and "if you're happy and you know it" with our students on stage in front of about 600 people… so fun! And actually quite nerve racking. Totally worth it though!

 All these seats were filled, plus many, many people standing. It was a full house! 

I won a moon cake eating contest on stage in front of the aforementioned 600 people… that's what you get for being an exuberant American that raises her hand without hesitation! I won a selfie stick and a water bottle… good win!After I got on stage I remembered that moon cakes are really not my favorite. Thankfully the ones for the competition were super yummy! No black means or suspicious meat inside.... Thank goodness. I'm a fairly adventurous eater but I don't like hidden surprises. 

Our super cute student dancing their little hearts out. I love these kiddos!

Where the Rice Rows Grow

So one amazing thing about China, and Guilin and Yangshou in particular, is how they grow rice. They have a lot of people to feed and not enough land, so they literally grow rice on the side of mountans. The thing is- rice grows in water, not just in the ground. Solution? Rice terraces! 

Rice terraces are like stairs of water, and so beautiful! Last time I was in China I was disappointed I never got a chance to go to Yangshou, so when I had the opportunity to go this year I was estatic! Yangshou truly lived up to my imagination, it was just so wonderful. When taking the bus to the rice terraces, I was surprised at how far up the mountain we had to go. It was a long, misty, and windy road to get there, but worth it!

One fun thing that happened while at the terrace was me getting separated from my group. I have asthma, so that combined with the high altitude made the hike up the terraces not particularly fun [or possible]. I decided to sit down and tell Brenna to go on without me, but after a few minutes I realized how worn out I was. Long story short, I was separated from them for about three hours before being happily reunited, bought six scarves, and made friends with a plenty of interesting people. I'll have to write up the long version of the story, or just put my video documentary of the whole even together… it's pretty impressive. 

The greenest place I've ever been!

Rice: up close and personal.

Toxic Toads

The awkward moment when.… a few weeks ago, I saw some really cute frogs hopping around outside our apartment, so I of course had to pick them up. I have always loved frogs, so I was excited to learn that we had some living near by. Tonight I was outside and Kallie pointed to the ground and was all excited because there was two adorable ones hopping around. I made a dive for them and was super excited to walk around holding the cute little froggies. After a minute, I showed an older chinese woman and she smiled and told me the Chinese name for them. But then when I showed her them again but more in the light, she gasped, told me a different name for them, and started urgently telling me to wash my hands. Turns out, the frogs are actually poisonous and shouldn't be picked up. When I told Daisy the story she said "Oh, well yes, people here don't pick up frogs…"  Moral of the story is don't pick up frogs no matter how cute they are. 

**Update. Found out this creature was a toad, not a frog. His name is also Todd. I saw Todd hoping around outside and it broke my heart I couldn't pick him up. Poor Todd, he needs love.**

Train to Guilin

Train rides... I've been on a few, and they're always interesting. Some highlights always include:

Everyone on the train taking pictures of us. 

Everyone on the train surrounding us as we tell them about our lives and teach them English. 

Everyone laughing at us as we awkwardly look for the bathroom. 

So as you can assume, all of the above happened to me during our 7.5 hour ride last night. 

When we got on the train, it was a little tricky to find our seats. Mostly because it was just so crowded you had to push through the crowds. Once we found our seats, we discovered that we were a little spread out. We were within talking distance (well, shouting distance) but we were all mixed in with the Chinese people on the train. After about 5 hours I broke the ice with the people across from me who spoke a tiny bit of English. They were some nice guys who were both 20. By the end of the train ride I had shown them a bunch of pictures of my family and life and they had shown me pictures of their girlfriends. It was so funny! I love "talking" to people on trains because it shows that even if you can hardly speak any words to each other, you still can be friends and have fun together. 

China at Home

Last year in China, there was a lady named Kelly who was hired by ILP and the school to take care of us, keep us on schedule, help us figure out how to get around town, and that type of thing. I became friends with her while there, and I still talk to her sometimes. I was talking to her a few weeks ago and she said she was visiting California on vacation soon, and I told her that I live in California. It turned out that they were flying into LAX so not terribly far from my house. So on Tuesday night, Kelly, her husband, and two of their friends came and spent the night at my house! After we had it all planned out that she and Gaung Gaung (her husband) would come, she said "oh and two other teachers will come too, that's ok right??" Haha, such a Chinese thing to do. Plan it all out, than throw extra stuff in there. But of course it was totally fine! My brothers are at EFY this week so we had extra beds- it worked our perfectly!
In China, everyone lives in apartments and there are hardly any houses. Only super duper rich people own houses so when they got to my house, they didn't think someone they knew could actually live there.  They were nervous to knock so they stood outside yelling "Laa-keen! La-keen!" super loudly until I realized it was them. They loved the tour of my house and they were so excited to see a real American house, they just went around touching everything and  walked around asking questions.  It reminded me of when I was in China and wanted to know everything about everything!! I had forgotten how different Chinese and American houses are . We're all just people but even  the structure of houses is different depending on where you live.  Kelly was the only one who spoke English out of the group, so she would translate for the other three when they had questions about stuff. They had never seen a dishwasher or a clothes dryer before, they had only heard stories about them.  When I showed them how they worked, they were in awe! They were so excited to help me load the dishwasher after dinner because they couldn't believe you could put dirty dishes in it and  they would come out clean. They also loved looking in our fridge, freezer, pantry, and spice cupboard because Chinese have smaller fridges and fewer spices. Ming, Kelly's friend, loves to cook so she was excited to look at how people in America cook. She helped us chop the onions and peppers for dinner and I have never seen vegetables cut so beautifully!
We made breakfast burritos for dinner all together and it was super fun! Cooking together is a big part of Chinese culture (because of foods like dumplings) so it was a great bonding experience with our new friends. Even though we couldn't talk very much because of the language barrier, it was neat to see how close you can grow with people just by working together. For breakfast we had French toast, sausage, and cereal.  They had never had French toast before-it was fun to teach them how Americans eat it! They  also mixed hot water, milk, hot chocolate mix, and cereal all together and ate it… It was very unique haha. But if you think about it, most of the foods we eat in America are really weird to the Chinese.
A neat thing that happened was we were able to say a prayer with them before we ate dinner. I don't even think we would be allowed to do that if we were in China because any form of proselyting is illegal there. The next morning we had already started eating breakfast when Kelly said "Wait no! We haven't prayed yet, don't we need to do that??" So my mom said a really nice prayer thanking God that they could visit, and afterwords Kelly translated the prayer for everyone and they started to discuss it. Then Kelly told us they realized that to us, having them there as guests was a direct blessing from our God and we were really grateful to him for allowing us to have them there as guests. It was really amazing to see them realize so clearly how we feel about blessings from God because they are not religious at all. What a blessing!
They also loved the pool and couldn't believe we own one. We swam in it til really late and it was the perfect weather. When I pointed out the stars, they got so excited! It was really neat to see. China is so smoggy, seeing stars is a big deal, I'm so glad they could see them here.
I'm so glad I can have international friends, and I really do feel blessed! 19 days til China!!

 Checking out the llamas!

 Gaung Gaung, Kelly, me, Ming, and Ping.

 Ming and my mom are new BFFs. :)

 

A delicious breakfast!

I'm so glad I could see Kelly again. Until next time!